Dina Korzun

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Like a collision of Charlie Kaufman and Woody Allen, this dark comedy is a surreal gem, astutely examining the issue of identity. And it gives the cast, especially Giamatti, terrific characters to sink their teeth into.

Paul Giamatti (as himself) is a New York actor rehearsing for a stage production of Uncle Vanya. Understandably, the play is depressing him, so he decides to put his soul in storage and lighten up. He finds a facility in the Yellow Pages, and the staff there (Strathairn and Ambrose) help him to desoul his body, although he's a little unnerved when, in a jar, his soul looks like a common chick pea. Meanwhile, Nina (Korzun) is a mule transporting souls between Russia and America, which causes rather serious complications for Paul.

"I think you hate women," a trusted colleague recently told me. She went on to say something along the lines of, "OK, maybe you don't hate women, but you certainly don't trust them." Weeks later, still considering those heavy words so lightly thrown, I thought of Ira Sachs's remarkable and challenging new film Forty Shades of Blue. The central character is the woman hanging onto the arm of her rich, older boyfriend. It's a woman's role usually subordinated while the hell-raising man gets all the laughs, glory, and screen time.

As played by Dina Korzun, I didn't understand this woman character at all. She's closed off, remote, seems not to use the mind that is her own, and puts up with all sorts of horseshit from her boorish man, Memphis music producer Alan James (Rip Torn, who tears up the screen with his raging bull persona). She looks like a fashion model, a slender little slip of a thing dressed in wonderful clothes. We learn that she is originally from Russia, and has a three-year-old child. She appears somewhat bored with her wealthy lifestyle and mansion, and -- here's the thing... she's either completely inaccessible or she doesn't use the brains in her head.

It's hard to imagine a more horrific modern-day nightmare. A young and wide-eyed Russian lass named Tanya (Dina Korzun) flies to Britain with her young son Artiom (Artiom Strelnikov) on the promise that her British fiancée will pick them up from the airport and whisk them off to a new and happy life together in the West.

When hubby-to-be doesn't show up, Tanya declares herself a refugee to avoid being immediately sent back to Moscow, then finds herself imprisoned in an urban gulag -- actually an abandoned seaside resort with roller coasters and video arcades that's been converted to a refugee camp.

Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski pulls the viewer right into the anxiety-drowned heart of a young, naive Russian immigrant in "Last Resort," a visceral, intimate drama that takes place in an internment camp for political refugees on the dreary coast of England.

Tanya (Dina Korzun) had never intended to land in a place like this -- an abandoned, deteriorating hotel turned into tenement housing -- when she flew to Britain with her 10-year-old son. Her English fiancé was supposed to meet them at the airport. He was their ticket to a better life in the West. But he never arrived and in desperation she requests political asylum to stay in the country, convinced her white knight is still coming.

Little did she know what she was getting into with this request. Stuck in a bare room and not allowed to leave the compound, fragile Tanya's frustration and grief begin to get the better of her when she learns that she can't even withdraw her sanctuary request and go back home without filling out a form that will take months to process. She is trapped in a claustrophobic corner of a foreign land with no one but her own child to depend on.